The One With Him and Her
by greenish orange
Summary: [Complete] Vignette. Monica has her closure. CM.


**A/N: **This is very experimental. To condense a very short story into an even shorter one, I was in a weird mood. Thus, this emerged. The end.

Wow, that really _is _short.

-

Hello, my name is Monica Geller.

I count myself lucky, I do, I really do, but life sometimes catches up with me without warning. My problems are sometimes deceptively trivial, you know – helplessly magnified in the daytime, when soap opera stars are declaring their love for one another, taking a moonlit stroll and making love on a cold winter's night by the light of a fire – and I realize . . . have you ever realized you have _no one_? You don't even have that friendly carton of nonfat ice cream your roommate has been secretly eating herself, that friendly and oh-so-cliché "it'll be alright, you'll find someone" speech your friends always make for you . . . no – your roommate has eaten the last of the rocky road and your friends are wrapped up in their own affairs. I wonder sometimes if they even notice _mine_.

It's funny, really – the whole thing isn't even about that special someone, but suddenly, in the blink of an eye, it is. And you begin to think. Maybe _that's_ why my life is speeding off-course into oblivion. Maybe _that's_ why reality is so scary. Maybe _that's_ why that feeling, which I can honestly only describe as nostalgia, makes it so damn hard for me to wake up and smell the coffee.

Sometimes, it's relatively easy to forget about boyfriends, fiancés, husbands, honeymoons, babies, first words, graduations, colleges, grandchildren . . . sometimes. And those times, when I do forget, it's good. It's really good. I can be okay again; I can be a different kind of Monica – flirty, untroubled, and happy to look as young as I do.

The other times are days like today, when all I want to do is drop work, run off to a nearby hospital, steal one of the babies, and raise it as my own. I have dreams about doing that some days. I have dreams about bursting through the doors of the hospital and seeing that one baby, _my_ baby, handed to me by a smiling nurse. She has darling outfits and irresistible dimples, small delicate hands and downy baby-fine hair so dark everyone thinks is black, but isn't. She is deliriously happy, surrounded by spoiling aunts and soft-hearted uncles, and a mother who loves her more than anything else in the world. And when I wake up, and all that's gone – well, my heart breaks just a little more.

The phone rings during dinner, and as it turns out, it's my father, announcing that he and my mother are going to arrive tomorrow evening for dinner and see some play starring an actress I don't catch the name of. He informs me cheerfully that my mother would have liked to talk to me, but she has some appointment fixing the style of her hair and isn't home yet. I swear I hear her in the background watching reruns of _Mash._

I'm up all that night, naturally, reliving my life over and over and over until I want to scream. I try everything to fall asleep. I drink warm milk. I turn on relaxing music. I read until I figure I'll need glasses. I drink Nyquil. I count sheep. But I can't do it. And the only thing the Nyquil does is give me the feeling that I've been drinking hard liquor.

By the time it does kick in, I've gotten about an hour of fitful sleep and feel completely wasted. It's obvious when I awake that Rachel's been out and about. Her bed is empty and I can smell candles burning; I briefly hope they aren't from last night, throw the covers off from around me, and crawl drunkenly out of bed.

The hot shower that would have revived me turned out to be freezing cold, and the message left on the mirror by Rachel was not "Have a great day, Mon – heart, Rach", but "Oven's not working . . . ?".

The oven acting up would have acceptable any other day than today. My cooking is one of the only things my mother appreciates. Losing that, coupled with the fact I have no boyfriend to show for all my trying, I know tonight will be hell.

After that, my day goes by slow or fast, differing in speed depending on which bodes worse for me. I clean the apartment until it reeks of cleaning products and my fingers are shiny and raw. I order everyone to take their shoes off before they walk on my carpet and if they don't, accidentally, I yell. I can't help but yell.

I feel myself slipping into an uncontrollable frenzy and I can't help it. Everything must be perfect. If it's not, then she'll lecture me and I'll be a teenager again, grappling at her mercy and wondering how I'll ever get away. I don't want that. I don't want that.

My friends are baffled. Phoebe and Rachel try talking sense into me, but I only put them to work. Disruptions are both annoying and refreshing, but I can't let on; it wastes time. Joey has probably been warned; he hasn't been seen all day. I think that even Ross is struck speechless by this demonic mania possessing me. I've never been so frenzied before. I think I've reached an all-time low. And all of a sudden, I'm sobbing hysterically onto my recently-dusted coffee table. I think of everything wrong and I can't stop, I can't stop, I can't stop. I can't even breathe.

Someone wraps their arms around me and gently urges me to rise. I'm laid on the couch; they tuck my hair behind my ear and I gratefully lay my head in their lap. My hand is brought to a pair of soft lips; my forehead receives the same tender treatment. I crane my head in order to express my thanks; my eyes are met with the vivid blue I know so well, and all of a sudden, I'm sitting upright in bed, shaking and sweating from the vivid aftershocks of the past.

I feel the warmth of a body close to mine and I turn my head. I watch, transfixed, as my husband's chest rises and falls in deep, undeterred slumber. I tremble as I touch the silver wisps of hair at his temple, careful not to wake him.

"I'm okay," I breathe to myself, and I am. I really am.


End file.
